A man wanted for an alleged role in a February home invasion attempt and shootout has turned himself in.

Jose Manuel Chavez, 21, is the third person arrested in the Feb. 5 incident.

A fourth man is at large and presumed to be in Mexico.

Authorities said the four men were armed with pistols and assault rifles when they tried to break into a home in the 300 block of West Vande Loo Street.

The homeowner opened fire with a pistol that he kept near the front door, injuring at least one man as they fled the neighborhood, near South Mission and West Valencia roads.

Chavez is charged with armed robbery and burglary, according to a Pima County Sheriff’s Department news release.

The two others arrested in the case are Alejandro Durazo and David Gutierrez, both 22, authorities said.

The fourth man, 23-year-old Jesus Mendivil, is believed to have been wounded and may have gone to Mexico, authorities said.

Abbott

A Pima County Jail corrections sergeant who was shot in the leg last week has resigned.

Eric Abbott, 51, submitted his resignation Monday, said Deputy Dawn Barkman, a Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman.

Barkman said she did not know whether the internal investigation into the incident had been closed in light of the resignation.

Abbott, who was employed by the county for 22 years at roughly $58,000 as of last year, was shot in the right calf April 7.

He was on duty and told investigators he felt a sting in his leg. The shooter has not been found.

Police closed an investigation into Abbott’s shooting after the sergeant admitted lying about aspects of the shooting, Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik said Thursday. Dupnik would not elaborate on what Abbott said to police.

Dupnik said of the Abbott case, “I’ve been told he told two substantially different versions about how this happened and there are no witnesses,” Dupnik said.

After telling one version of the shooting Abbott was confronted with conflicting physical evidence and changed his story, Dupnik said.

But, Dupnik added, Abbott “still is insisting he was shot from an unknown source.”

A first-degree murder arrest warrant has been issued for 22-year-old Anibal Cordova in connection with the shooting death of Alexis Nunez, 18.

Nunez died at an area hospital after being shot near a bus stop on South 12th Avenue near Drexel Road Wednesday afternoon in what authorities say was a gang-related incident.

Police say Nunez saw Cordova sitting at a bus stop and began arguing with him.

Cordova allegedly brandished a handgun and shot Nunez at least once before fleeing the scene on foot.

Investigators are seeking Cordova and urged anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts to call 911 or 88-CRIME.

Police are seeking at least three suspects in the robbery of an East Side bank Thursday morning.

Witnesses said the robbers, who wore masks and were dressed in black, fled the Meriwest Credit Union, 5801 E. Broadway, in a tan sedan about 9:30 a.m., a Tucson police news release said.

An employee called 911, saying she could hear another employee screaming from the office lobby, “We’re being robbed.”

At least one customer and several employees were inside during the robbery, police said.

Nobody was injured and no shots were fired, said Officer Linda Galindo, a police spokeswoman.

Witnesses did not report seeing weapons, but the robbers implied they were armed, the news release said.

Patrol officers found the getaway car, a 2000 Chevrolet Malibu reported stolen the night before, abandoned nearby, police said.

Police said the men got away with an undisclosed amount of money.

A U.S. Army specialist who pleaded guilty to bribery was sentenced Thursday to four years of probation and ordered to repay $3,500.

Christina M. Swenson, 40, was demoted to private and discharged from the Army under less than honorable conditions as part of the plea agreement, according to Sandy Raynor, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Swenson, who worked in the hospitality lounge at Tucson International Airport arranging transportation for soldiers traveling to Fort Huachuca, had solicited money on five occasions from a local shuttle company, authorities said.

The company was already contracting with the Army to transport the soldiers to Fort Huachuca and had rights of first refusal under the contract.

As part of an investigation, the shuttle company owner paid Swenson a total of $4,500 at her home in Tucson over the course of three months.

The last payment of $1,000 was recovered when Swenson was arrested after the transaction took place Jan. 8.

Authorities are investigating a gang-related shooting that killed an 18-year-old man on Tucson’s South Side Wednesday afternoon.

The Tucson Police Department has closed down northbound 12th Avenue from Drexel to Bilby roads. At 6:30 p.m., police expected the road to be closed for several hours while detectives investigate the crime scene, said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a department spokesman.

Pacheco said the shooting occurred around 4 p.m. and was caused by a gang-related argument. Police have not released the name of the victim.

The 18-year-old was riding in a car with a friend when he saw the suspected shooter sitting at a bus stop on the east side of 12th Avenue across the street from Mission Manor Park, Pacheco said.

His friend parked the car at the nearby Parkview Apartments, where the victim got out and started arguing with the suspect, Pacheco said.

While the two were arguing, a beige Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up with a female driver and male passenger.

The suspected shooter brandished a handgun and shot the victim at least once before getting into the Jeep, Pacheco said.

The Jeep drove off and the victim’s friend got into his car and began following it.

The chase ended a short time later when the Jeep got into a collision near South Sixth Avenue and West Irvington Road, but Pacheco did not know what the Jeep had collided with.

Pacheco said the victim was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Police have identified a man killed in a motorcycle collision early Friday morning as 25-year-old James Winston Thompson IV.

Thompson, who was originally from Washington, was pronounced dead at the scene when paramedics arrived at roughly 2 a.m. in a gated neighborhood near Tanque Verde and Sabino Canyon roads.

Police said Thompson was killed after crashing a friend’s motorcycle into a home there.

Sgt. Mark Robinson, a spokesman for the Tucson Police Department, gave this account:

Thompson had been out with friends before going to a friend’s home in the 7300 block of East Placita Sacra.

Another friend at the home had a Suzuki GSXR 1000 sport bike. The man allowed Thompson to sit on the bike and was walking into the home when he heard the motorcycle start.

Thompson had put on a helmet that was near the motorcycle and was driving east on Placita Sacra before turning around to drive west on the street.

The motorcycle owner noticed the bike wobble as Thompson rode by.

Thompson lost control of the motorcycle and crashed into a home in the 2500 block of North Avenida Orgullo.

He was hurled through the window of a spare bedroom and hit a wall inside.

At least one man hopped into the room through the window to help Thompson but left when a woman who lived there came into the room.

Robinson said the man realized he was in someone’s home uninvited and that the owners may be armed.

The woman’s husband called 911 reporting that a man had jumped in through the window and was now lying on the floor. The couple are in their 80s, Robinson said.

Friends told police that Thompson had been drinking earlier that evening but it was not clear if he was intoxicated at the time of the collision.

Authorities are awaiting autopsy reports to determine if alcohol played a role in the incident, Robinson said.

South Tucson and Tucson firefighters fight a house fire in the 100 block of East 31st Street on Friday afternoon. Damage was estimated at $50,000.

Five people have been displaced after a small residence on the South Side caught fire shortly before noon Friday.

South Tucson and Tucson firefighters responded to the blaze near South Sixth Avenue and 31st Street, Tucson fire Capt. Tricia Tracy said.

An estimated $50,000 worth of damage was done to the 500-square-foot home, she said.

The home’s two residents were not home at the time and Tracy said the American Red Cross will provide them with temporary living arrangements.

Three other people also will be looking for a place to stay because the power had to be turned off to two nearby residences that shared utilities with the house that caught fire, Tracy said.

She said high winds made controlling the blaze difficult, and said homeowners should keep a defensible area clear of weeds and other growth around residences.

Wind gusts in the city reached more than 30 mph Friday, according to the National Weather Service.

Eight units from Tucson Fire and one unit from South Tucson Fire responded to the blaze.

A man who turned a gun on himself after apparently fatally shooting his girlfriend at a house party Sunday died Friday.

Roberto Gardea Ruiz, 30, died Friday morning from the gunshot wound to his head, sheriff’s spokeswoman Deputy Dawn Barkman said.

Pima County Sheriff’s Department deputies found Ruiz wounded and his girlfriend, 23-year-old Ashley Nicole Fimbrez, dead in an upstairs bedroom of the couple’s Northwest Side home early Sunday.

Deputies were responding to a call of unknown trouble at the home in the 1000 block of West Sea Star Drive and were talking to party guests when they heard the gunshots.

The home at 2385 W. Silver River Way is among thousands that went into foreclosure last year in the Tucson area.

Midvale Park is being targeted by Pima County officials in an effort to combat the negative effects of foreclosures in the neighborhood.

The program, funded by the Pima County Industrial Development Authority using money from the Southern Arizona Land Trust, involves buying foreclosed homes and turning them into low-cost rentals.

Foreclosures continue to pile up in the metropolitan area, with a record number of filings in March. More than 1,100 foreclosure filings were reported during the month, with filings from March 30 and 31 still to be counted, officials said. That follows 1,007 filings in February, which was the monthly record, officials said.

There were more than 9,000 foreclosure filings in Pima County in 2008 and more than 4,500 in 2007, according to Realty Trac, an online foreclosure listing service.

The authority’s hope is that the rentals will help keep neighborhoods stable and provide shelter for people who have been forced out of their homes by foreclosure.

“What we’re trying to do is come a full circle on foreclosures,” said John Glaze, chief operating officer for Family Housing Resources. “I think that is a great thing.”

The organization, a statewide nonprofit focused on affordable housing, is managing a dozen foreclosed properties for the county’s development authority.

The authority’s project is the first of three similar programs coming to the metropolitan area. The city and county are both receiving money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to start similar efforts both in the city and unincorporated areas.

The main purpose behind the federal funding is to keep homes from sitting empty on neighborhood streets.

HUD is using data provided by the U.S. Postal Service that shows when a residence has been vacant for 90 days or longer.

“You can see neighborhoods where there is vacant housing that is unmaintained,” said Gary Bachman, a senior housing planner with the county. “Unkept yards and vandalism can really bring down a neighborhood in both the appearance and the morale.”

Betty Villegas, a program manager with the county’s Department of Community and Economic Development, said she is puzzled by the vacancies.

“Right now we really don’t where people that have been foreclosed on are going,” she said. “They’re moving somewhere and the rental vacancy rate is so high that you know that they’re not getting new apartments. Are they going to live with relatives? Do they think they can’t rent because of their credit?

“There’s a lot of unknowns right now but we feel that even if we buy 20 houses, even if we buy 30 houses, it is an impact,” Villegas said. “It is an impact to families and neighborhoods.”

Bachman and Villegas both helped the Pima County Industrial Authority with its program to purchase and fix up foreclosed homes.

“One of the things that we saw right away is that when they started cleaning up the weeds and even fixing up the facade of the house, the other neighbors started fixing up their own houses again,” Villegas said. “It’s really a trickle-down effect. When you start fixing up one house the homeowners start feeling better about their neighborhood.”

The authority spent $1.5 million to buy and repair 12 homes in the Midvale area, said Steven Russo, legal counsel for the authority.

County officials say that the Southwest Side neighborhood has been hit hard with foreclosures over the past year as the subprime mortgage crisis mounted.

Russo said rental proceeds will go back into the Southern Arizona Land Trust, which is funded primarily by general funds from the county.

Resources from the county-run land trust are dedicated to supporting affordable housing.

Nearly half of the homes will be ready for tenants in the next few weeks, Glaze said.

One home is ready and a family of five will move in this week, he said.

The Romero family will be the first to take advantage of these types of programs here.

Abel Romero, 33, is moving his family into a home in Midvale Park this week.

He said he was given 40 days to move out of his South Side home after it was foreclosed on earlier this year.

“Trying to get into a new house is very, very costly and we were fortunate,” Romero said. “This program allows us to move into a house at a very, very low rent.”

He’s paying about $700 a month for a three-bedroom house.

Romero said his financial troubles started six months ago when he was laid off from his job as a repairs processor in the avionics industry.

“I got laid off from my job and our payments were just too high,” Romero said. “We just fell behind on our payments.

“You try to make your payments but when you’re already behind, all you’re paying on is late charges,” he said. “We just got way too far behind and we have other bills that we have to pay. It was just a vicious cycle and we had no choice, pretty much.”

Romero said he also had to file for bankruptcy. His mother-in-law told him about the program managed by Family Housing Resources.

“It’s mainly something that’s going to get us into a home and allow us to establish ourselves again and get back on our feet,” he said. “Hopefully down the line, once we get back on our feet, we’ll be able to buy another home.”

Abel Romero (left), his son Jacob, 5, and Abel's cousin Daniel Miranda move into a new home in Midvale Park that they are renting through a county neighborhood stabilization program. The Romero family was forced out of a home it owned by foreclosure.

Local officials will soon begin using federal funds to clean up blighted, abandoned or foreclosed homes that they say can devalue and demoralize neighborhoods throughout the county.

Two grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are being allocated to Pima County and the city of Tucson as part of the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

The purpose of the funds is to buy, repair or demolish homes in neighborhoods deemed to be high-stress areas due to foreclosures.

These areas are identified using a formula that combines foreclosure rates, high-cost loan rates and vacant-home rates among other things. These neighborhoods are rated based on a risk score on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 assigned to the neighborhoods most at risk from foreclosures.

City officials will receive roughly $7.3 million to buy and rehabilitate at least 32 homes while their counterparts in the county hope to use $3.2 million to purchase roughly 20 homes in areas such as South Tucson, Ajo and the Flowing Wells area.

The majority of the high- stress neighborhoods are within city limits and city officials plan to target those areas that have risk scores of 8 or higher when they begin buying houses.

City officials have also noted in the grant application that the area north of Speedway Boulevard between Interstate 10 and Wilmot Road is also critical because those neighborhoods predominantly consist of rentals, and foreclosures will further drop homeownership rates.

The agreement with HUD was signed earlier this week and Whitman expects to start shopping for nearly three dozen homes soon. The city is looking to purchase homes solely from Fannie Mae, but there are restrictions.

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The federal government defines those loans as having interest rates that are 3 percentage points or more above the rates on Treasury securities with comparable maturities.

Local governments such as the county and the city of Tucson used data provided by HUD on home loans from 2004 to 2006.

The Tucson Citizen found in a prior analysis that area homebuyers took out $1.3 billion in high-cost loans in 2005, nearly triple the $489.5 million taken out the year prior.

But it is more than high-interest loans that are causing people to lose their homes, said Betty Villegas,a program manager with the Pima County Community and Economic Development Department.

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How to apply

To apply for a Pima County Industrial Development Authority program, contact Greg Flatt of FHR Residential at 777-3402.

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Interactive Map

See an interactive map of foreclosed homes

The City Council has extended its study session portion of the weekly meeting to deal with numerous items that have been mounting over the past two months.

Among the items are the city budget, water rates and a review of hiring policies that would limit the city’s search for a new police chief.

Another item on the agenda will be a discussion of accountability and transparency in the city’s Rio Nuevo project.

A hearing also will be held during the council’s regular session Tuesday evening to gather public comment on a proposal to annex Raytheon Missile Systems, a move which could lead to the annexation of the nearby Tucson International Airport.

The council is expected to discuss possible ways to balance the city budget that could include cutting contributions to social service programs.

According to previous documents and discussions, cuts to outside agencies for the fiscal year beginning July 1 could total almost $4 million.

City departments such as Parks & Recreation and Transportation have been providing city officials with proposals that include scaling back services and cutting city jobs.

The city also will be looking at the financial plan for Tucson Water, one of the three city departments that does not rely on sales taxes to operate.

Water officials are proposing a 10 percent water rate increase to help meet the 2010 fiscal year budget expectations.

The rate increase would begin on July 6 and the plan calls for another 10 percent rate increase for the 2011 fiscal year with subsequent 8.1 percent annual increases for three years after that.

The increases would make up revenue shortfalls that city officials say were caused by a decline in new home construction and usage patterns over the past two years. Water conservation programs also have caused a decline in water rate revenues.

Other measures being taken to make up for the overall budget shortfall include 12-day furloughs for employees and a hiring freeze for some vacant positions.

Rio Nuevo discussions will center around a memo sent by Councilwomen Regina Romero and Karin Uhlich calling for greater fiscal responsibility for the special taxing district.

The memo recommends separating the finances and management of the district from regular city business. The discussion comes in the wake of a decision by the city to suspend the council’s Rio Nuevo subcommittee earlier this week.

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IF YOU GO

• What: City Council meeting

• Where: Council Chambers in City Hall, 255 W. Alameda St.

• When: Study session begins at 1 p.m. and regular session begins at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.

A man was killed Tuesday morning when he lost control of his motorcycle on Arivaca Road south of Tucson, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.

Deputies withheld the man’s identity pending notification of his relatives.

Deputy Dawn Barkman, a department spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail that the man lost control of his motorcycle, missed a turn and crashed into a road sign.

Deputies were called at 11:36 a.m. and the man died at the scene, deputies said.

The man was wearing a helmet and there were no apparent signs of alcohol involvement, but investigators believe that speed may have been a factor in the crash, deputies said.

Man, now in Tucson nursing home, finds out he has large family

DuMoulin, in his late 40s, doing a household chore

A New Mexico woman’s decadeslong search for her father ended Friday when she saw him for the first time since 1971 – in a nursing home here.

Amelia Mendivil, 59, had sought 86-year-old Walter DuMoulin since 1984.

“It’s just like a miracle,” she said. “We just assumed he was dead. I couldn’t believe he was in front of me.

“It’s still like it’s not really true,” she said.

Mendivil used the online Social Security Death Index to attempt to track her father, but his name never turned up.

She finally found his name using a different Internet search and contacted the Tucson Police Department to file a missing persons report.

The report of a person missing for more than three decades caught the attention of Michele Shaw, a crime analyst in the police special investigations unit.

Mendivil and her sister, 61-year-old Judy Carter, had lost touch with their father when the women moved from their hometown of Ajo after he divorced their mother.

The father of two who taught his daughters how to play chess and love classical music was struggling with alcoholism and apparently moved to Tucson, where he eventually became homeless.

A World War II veteran, DuMoulin had been seen at the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System, but the federal Health Insurance Privacy Protection Act prevented hospital officials from releasing information on his whereabouts to Mendivil.

Eventually, DuMoulin was placed in a Tucson-area group home for elderly men, then moved to Villa Campana Healthcare, a nursing home near St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Mendivil said the social worker there told her that everyone felt sorry for DuMoulin because he never had visitors.

Shaw started making phone calls when the report landed on her desk and a check of DuMoulin’s last known address turned up no additional information.

A phone call to the VA confirmed that DuMoulin had been a patient there and a second call to the hospital’s police department turned up the name of the group home DuMoulin had lived in.

Officials at that home remembered DuMoulin and gave Shaw a list of possible nursing facilities where he might be staying.

Villa Campana was fourth on the list of possible homes, she said.

“I was just dumfounded,” Shaw said. “I really don’t think I did something extraordinary except make some phone calls and make some good connections.

“It’s so much fun to be a part of this,” she said. “Police work isn’t always sunshine and roses.”

The first thing that Carter said to her father when she saw him Tuesday afternoon was, “Hi, dad. I’m not skinny anymore.”

Carter was 23 and Mendivil was 21 when they last saw their father.

DuMoulin didn’t recognize his daughters, but their voices brought back memories.

When asked if he could recall helping Mendivil with homework, DuMoulin said it took him a couple of years to realize that she was tricking him into doing her homework in its entirety.

The man who had no visitors a few weeks ago now has a family of two daughters, eight grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

Four of the grandchildren live in Tucson, Mendivil said.

Asked if he was expecting to have such a large family, DuMoulin said of his daughters, “knowing these two, yeah.”

He said finding his daughters was “wonderful, believe me.”

DuMoulin said he tried to track down his daughters in 2005, but a phone call to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department proved fruitless because Mendivil had remarried and changed her name.

Despite finding his family again, DuMoulin likes where he lives and has no plans to live with his daughters in New Mexico near Silver City.

Carter said she plans to move to Tucson when she retires in a year and both sisters plan to make the four-hour trip as frequently as possible to visit their newly found father.

“We just lost our mom six years ago; she would have been happy to see him too,” Carter said. “We’ve tried off and on to find him and we just thought he was lost forever. I just wanted him to know how many grandchildren and great-grandchildren he has and that we’re not going to lose him again.”

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Detectives questioned and released a blind man they had sought in connection with a homicide that occurred early Tuesday.

A second man is being sought for questioning and is described as being in his 50s and wearing a black peacoat and beanie.

Sydney Bryant Graham, 42, was contacted by deputies after a passer-by saw him walking along East Benson Highway near South Palo Verde Boulevard and recognized him from news reports.

Graham had been sought because he was reportedly seen arguing with Allan Frederick Charles, 23, shortly before Charles’ body was found under the Interstate 10 overpass at South Craycroft Road at roughly 12:30 a.m., authorities said. Anyone with information on the second man is urged to call 911 or 88-CRIME.

Detectives are seeking two homeless men for questioning in a homicide that occurred Tuesday morning.

The men were seen arguing with Alland Frederick Charles, 23, near the area where his body was found, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department news release said.

Authorities identified one man being sought as Sidney Bryant Graham, 42, who they said is blind.

Authorities have not identified the second man, but he is believed to be in his 50s and was last seen wearing a black pea coat and a black beanie. No other information was available on his clothing. The second man may have suffered a head injury in the argument and a fight, according to the release.

Charles’ body was found by a passer-by under the Interstate 10 overpass at South Craycroft Road about 12:50 a.m., said Deputy Dawn Barkman, a spokeswoman.

Anyone with information on the men is encouraged to dial 911 or 88-CRIME, the Pima County attorney’s anonymous tipster line.